“What do you find to laugh at? Have not I told you a hundred times at Graufthal that I should start sooner or later? It all seems to me perfectly natural.”
“But you’re not going about like that?”
“Certainly I am.”
“You are going to announce your peregrination of souls, your transformation of plants into animals, and animals into men?”
“Yes, with many other not less remarkable things which I have not had time to tell you of.”
“But, I say, you’ve put some money in your pocket, at all events? That’s a very important article in preaching.”
“I!” cried Mathéus, carried away by a noble pride; “I have not brought with me a liard—not a kreutzer! When one is possessed of the truth, one is always rich enough.”
“One is always rich enough!” repeated the fiddler; “that’s a good idea! a capital idea!”
The peasants gathered about them, and without understanding this scene, saw plainly by Coucou Peter’s face that something extraordinary was passing.
Suddenly the fiddler began to dance, waved his hat gaily, and exclaimed—